the president wants a legacy of environment, gun laws, energy, is he going to get this or trapped in this debate over budgets and taxes and spending cuts? >> the budget, tax and spending, not so much on the tax but when history looks at what happened in the deal on the fiscal cliff, a lot of positives there. the 99% of the people get permanent tax cuts. that is a big deal if you're president of the united states. or even in congress. 1% 0 going to pay more. i would say certainly that's the right policy. so maybe it's not so bad. the problem is that the process was like this permanent divorce court. and you just could not unravel in any meaningful way what's going on, what's going to happen and so you have the brigade of biden and mitch commonly coming in -- mitch mcconnell coming in at the last minute. >> zpwhr and is it in everyone's interests to get something done, the republicans need a legacy to reshape their image or just committed to try to block the president, gloria, at all costs? >> i think they're going to be blocking. and look, the tax issue was the president's turf. cuter